This year's results show that in spite of the economic crisis, the EU as a whole is increasing its innovation performance. Moreover, Europe is reducing the innovation gap towards the US and Japan. However, the worrying news is that the innovation divide within the EU is increasing. Some Member States are among the global leaders, but others are falling behind. In some parts of Europe, business investment in innovation is declining due to the crisis.
Based on the Summary Innovation Index, the Member States fall into the following four country groups:
- Innovation leaders: Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Finland, all show a performance well above that of the EU average.
- Innovation followers: Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, the UK, Austria, Ireland, France, Slovenia, Cyprus and Estonia all show a performance close to that of the EU average.
- Moderate innovators: The performance of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Greece, Slovakia, Hungary, Malta and Lithuania is below that of the EU average.
- Modest innovators: The performance of Poland, Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria is well below that of the EU average.
More information:
Mr. Bonifacio GARCIA PORRAS, Head of Unit "Innovation policy for growth" Bonifacio.Garcia-Porras@cc.europa.eu and
Mr. Tomasz JERZYNIAK, tomasz.jerzyniak@ec.europn.eu
The document can be downloaded (76 pages, 15 Mb) from:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/ius-2013_en.pdf
Similar scoreboards published:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/ius-2011_en.pdf
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/ius/ius-2010_en.pdf
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/proinno/eis-2009_en.pdf
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/proinno/eis-2008_en.pdf
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/proinno/eis-2007_en.pdf